The National Health Service, the publicly funded national healthcare system for England, is the largest single-payer healthcare system in the world.

It employs over 1.5 million people, putting it in the top five of the world’s largest workforces, alongside the US Department of Defence, McDonalds, Walmart and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.

Our ‘We are the NHS’ campaign helped NHS England recruit the next generation of nurses and encourage ex-nurses to reconsider the NHS, by restoring national pride in England’s most loved public institution and its people.

Nurses are the heart and soul of the NHS, but they were leaving in unprecedented numbers. 33,000 left in 2017 alone.

In 2017, university nursing applications nosedived, delivering ‘the worst year for applications on record’ (UCAS).

Brexit also had an immediate impact on EU nurses joining the NHS.

Our Objectives were to recruit new, retain existing and compel ex-nurses to return.

The NHS is the National Health Service of England. It is a free service for all and evokes much national pride in the dedication of its wonderful staff. The campaign featured the many different roles at the NHS under the thought ‘We are the NHS’. We used different media to highlight the different roles. Posters, TV, digital and social all featured different roles currently available at the NHS.

In research, we uncovered how crucial support networks were for both recruiting and retaining the nursing workforce.

It was integral that we made friends and family proud of the careers their loved ones had chosen.

So, our campaign would not only speak to existing or prospective nurses but extend to their loved ones, friends and family. Given the size of the NHS workforce– 1.5 million – this effectively meant everyone in England.

So we took a step back to look at the bigger picture. This wasn’t just about recruiting nurses, it was about a broader NHS repositioning as an employer brand.

We had to move the NHS away from the perceptions of a dated, neglected institution toward a progressive and hopeful, beacon of humanity. This meant celebrating it’s work and it’s people, first.

Our strategic was the ultimate humblebrag: this is the NHS, this is what we do.

The campaign was shot in hospitals across England, featuring real members of staff. This was one of the key requirements of the campaign. We needed to project the reality of what the job entailed, rather than sugarcoating it in an overly addy way. Everything here is 100% real. This made shooting quite a challenge for our photographers and TV crew, but we managed it thanks to the unprecedented access the NHS granted us. We shot everything from helping people with prosthetic legs to walk again, to a dance class for cancer sufferers, to a very real life birth.

The filming was shot over a super intense 3-day period, with the stills and social films taking the week after.

We used different media to highlight the different roles. Posters, TV, digital and social all featured different roles currently available at the NHS.

The campaign was voted ‘Most liked’ Ad of the Year, with a 57% likeability score - the highest since records began (Adwatch).

In the first campaign week, Google searches for ‘nursing careers’ reached their highest level since 2005 (Google Trends).

410,838 website visits, up 604% YOY. We had more people explore career options on our site than the total NHS England nursing population (Google Analytics).

10% decrease in ‘I would get greater job satisfaction working somewhere other than the NHS (Kantar Public).

19% increase in those considering returning (Kantar Public).

3x Increase in visits to ‘Return to Nursing’ website , up from 3,639 in 2017 to 10,290 across our campaign. (Google Analytics).

4% uplift in university applications, an increase of 1,260 applications (UCAS). Against a backdrop of a 13% decline in 2018, this meant the campaign delivered incremental 4,091 nurses against our forecast (Agency forecast).